Contemporary television broadcast receivers (e.g., televisions, satellite, terrestrial or cable receiver units, set top boxes, and even video cassette recorders and the like) often provide users with the ability to automatically record received content, either to an internal storage device such as a magnetic disk or to an external recording device controlled by the receiver, such as a video cassette recorder (VCR). In addition to recording content received on a specified channel during a specified period, many receivers allow content-based control over recording.
Conventional content-based recording typically relies on peripheral information regarding the content, such as control codes or textual descriptions describing the content, which is embedded within or transmitted in conjunction with the content. Thus, for example, a user might program the receiver to record content identified by predetermined control codes transmitted with the content, or based on the presence of keywords within a textual description associated with the content.
Such mechanisms are limited, however, by the availability of accurate control codes or descriptions with the content. The descriptions associated with content may contain a sufficiently detailed description to allow a user to parse a keyword search which will be successful in identifying relevant matches. Descriptions associated with local news programs, for example, often merely state “News,” and advertisements are essentially never described. Moreover, descriptions are typically too general to allow a specific portion of a program to be recorded.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for strictly content-based identification of content to be recorded, without relying solely on peripheral information associated with the content.